This Valentine’s Day, Say It With Roaches

Hoo boy, here it is already Valentine’s Day and you still haven’t picked out a gift for that special someone. You were planning on going shopping over the weekend, but you started watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit on Netflix instant watch and there are just so many episodes! Plus, you’ve been on thin ice recently so the old flowers-and-candy route just won’t cut it. You need something unique, but what? Jewelry notable for its expensiveness? Some kind of sex clothing? Think!

Well, never fear, because the Bronx Zoo has you covered. In exchange for a mere $10 donation, the zoo will let you name a Madagascar hissing cockroach after your sweet boo. It’s a gift that lasts a lifetime – the lifetime of a roach! And it’s the only gift you can give this Valentine’s Day that will make your darling say, “I don’t get it…are you breaking up with me?”

The zoo’s website notes that the Madagascar hissing cockroach is the biggest and loudest cockroach of all, implying that this fact is somehow positive. Because, you know, people love their roaches loud. Madagascar hissing cockroaches love to climb, and typically live in rotting logs. Now that’s amore!

The roach gets its name from a hissing sound it makes by forcing air through spiracles, or breathing pores, located on its thorax and abdomen. During courtship rituals, males hiss at females to woo them, as if to say, “Hey baby, check out my spiracles, and how I can force air through them.” The females dig on this because Mother Nature is a crazy kinky freak.

If you want to pay money name a roach after your lover you had better act fast, as the Bronx Zoo has only 58,000 cockroaches available for this special promotion – presumably all in one fish tank in a basement somewhere, crawling all over each other.  The donations will go to benefit the Wildlife Conservation Society.

(photo by Muffet)

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